Staff Bikes
this month i have mostly been… “Got a shift on...”
The most impressive fleet in the business hits its stride at the start of the summer. It’s gonna be good...
Kawasaki ZX-6R Triumph Street Triple R BMW S 1000 R Ducati Panigale KTM 1290 Super Duke R Yamaha MT-09
The ZX-6R has travelled wide and far this month – making it to our SBOTY test (albeit as a contingency plan if our plan A failed). I was relieved in a way that it didn’t get to tread the Portimao boards, although the opportunity to spank it round on a set of Bridgestone R10s would have been brilliant. But the truth is that in standard form the Kawasaki isn’t quite as clinical as the Triumph 675R, so it sat forlornly on its stand for two days waiting for the worst to happen to one of the others.
On its return, Charles Charlie Charles of the Charles Brothers commandeered it for sales duties. The first task was to go and visit HM Quickshifter. While he was there, one of the firm’s fine units happened to fall on the poor old Kawasaki – and now the bike is all the better for it. I am still amazed that no Japanese sportsbike is fitted with a ’shifter as standard. Like the reluctance to fit properly sporty rubber, this reluctance to move with the times is costing Japan dear – but it also means that the likes of HM can clear up!
Lee from HM fitted the firm’s Plus SS quickshifter to the bike. It’s a plug and play unit, so that means no chopping into the loom or any of that nonsense. This is an upgrade to the Plus unit, with HM’s Seamless Shift (SS) technology coming to the party. Like most shifters, this unit works by cutting ignition when a sensor detects pressure on the gear shifter – nowt new so far. You can set the sensitivity of the sensor, and also the cut time. And we’ve seen all this before, too. But where this system gains is by being able to adapt the ignition cut time by detecting when the gear is in place and bringing power back in when this occurs – even if it’s before the preset ignition kill time. This is because each gear shift is different, hence the adaptability of the
The reluctance to move with the times is costing Japan dear...”
unit. It’s properly clever stuff.
Though not allowed in BSB (because it’s connected to the ignition and it doesn’t go through the ECU), in other forms of racing it is proving to be highly effective. Gary Johnson used one on his supersport Triumph 675R at the TT, Bruce Anstey used HM’s GP unit on his 132.298mph lap, whilst the SS unit is in use in Moto2 – a series where every millisecond counts.
So far, I’ve only tried it out on the roads, but already the difference to the bike is palpable. With the gasser fully open, each gear slots in so smoothly and quickly that the ZX-6R almost feels like an automatic. Thanks to the meaty midrange the revs hardly dip, meaning that the acceleration just keeps on coming. I’ve yet to have a fiddle with all the settings available, all accessible on the little digital screen, but rest assured I’ll be having a grope around, because that’s what we men were born to do!